Questions and answers

Question reference: S6W-33074

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 21 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how Registers of Scotland ensures that its registry management systems meet the needs of users, including legal professionals and the general public.

Registers of Scotland is a non-Ministerial Public Body answerable to the Scottish Parliament.

RoS formally surveys its customers (professionals and citizens) twice a year through the Customer Services Institute to benchmark customer satisfaction and customer effort. RoS uses the information provided to make improvements to RoS’s services. RoS consistently achieves customer satisfaction scores and customer effort scores that are significantly better than the public sector benchmark.

In addition, RoS adheres to the Scottish Approach to Service Design (https://www.gov.scot/publications/the-scottish-approach-to-service-design/) with activity including research sessions. Around 250 such sessions were held during the last year along with 20 live webinars for customers spanning 14 topics of customer/user interest.

RoS have a monthly accessibility clinic working alongside colleagues from the Scottish Government and regularly research with customers to ensure their services follow the web content accessibility guidelines, (wcag 2.2 www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/ ).

RoS also maintains an effective network meeting regularly with key stakeholders including lenders, UK Finance, and The Law Society of Scotland’s Property Law Committee ensuring visibility and opportunity for lenders, solicitors and conveyancing professional bodies and individuals to contact them with questions, improvement suggestions or service delivery concerns.

Question reference: S6W-33049

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 21 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how it ensures that funding for community radio is distributed equitably across Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-33054

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 21 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how it supports the inclusion of smaller or independent media outlets in its advertising strategies.

Scottish Government marketing teams do not specify inclusion of any specific media outlets to media agencies who prepare the media strategy and schedules based on audience to ensure advertising is as effective as possible and delivers high levels of reach for the investment. Therefore campaign budget is also a critical factor in media agencies determining whether smaller outlets, which deliver lower levels of reach in general, will be added to a media schedule.

The media agency does not have guaranteed spend arrangements with media vendors, whether large or small. Each media property is assessed according to its merit and relevance to campaign requirements.

Question reference: S6W-33140

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 10 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 21 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many Foundation Year 2 doctors have returned to NHS specialty training after a break from service in each of the last five years.

Question reference: S6W-33068

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 21 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what the annual cost of operating Registers of Scotland has been in each of the last five years.

Question reference: S6W-32857

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 07 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 21 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how much of the £254 million that was committed in its 2016 memorandum of understanding with Aberdeenshire Council and Aberdeen City Council, for additional investment in housing, transport and digital in the Aberdeen city region, has been spent to date.

To date, £32.2m funding committed through the Memorandum of Understanding has been spent. A breakdown of this figure, along with explanatory detail, is provided below:

Project	Spend to Date (£m)
Improve rail links between Aberdeen and the Central Belt	23.2
Improve the A90/A937 junction at Laurencekirk	4.0
Extend digital infrastructure	5.0

The total invested to 7 December 2024 (Railway Period 9 – 2024) on projects to reduce journey times between Aberdeen and the Central Belt is £23.2m. Of this figure, £16.4m has been spent on the Aberdeen – Central Belt Service Improvement project, and £6.8m has been spent on the project to improve rail line speeds in the Barnhill area between Perth and Dundee. The scope of the project includes signal enhancements, improvements to station layouts at Dundee, Aberdeen, Arbroath and Montrose, and specific capacity alterations, including freight loops, to facilitate the mixed operation of faster and slower trains on the same route.

Just over £4m has been spent on taking forward necessary design and assessment work to deliver the new grade-separated junction at Laurencekirk. This project is currently going through the statutory authorisation process.

£5m has been spent on digital infrastructure projects which are supporting the enhancement of both public and private service delivery. In total, £7.8m has been committed to support digital projects.

The Scottish Government is actively encouraging Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Councils to work together to identify Housing Infrastructure Fund projects which meet terms of the Memorandum of Understanding aligned with the Aberdeen City Region Deal.

Scottish Government officials have maintained regular contact and liaison with officials in both Local Authorities to identify potential Housing Infrastructure Fund projects. No proposals which meet the terms of Housing Infrastructure Fund have been received to date.

Question reference: S6W-33046

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angus Robertson on 21 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what guidance it provides to local authorities to encourage support for community radio stations.

The Scottish Government does not provide guidance to local authorities specifically about support for community radio stations. We are however clear that community radio is a valuable resource across many communities in Scotland and we will persist in championing the continuation and strengthening of these vital services for Scottish listeners through our engagement with relevant stakeholders, including the UK Government and the regulator Ofcom.

Question reference: S6W-33006

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 21 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what the average fee has been for (a) accessing and (b) updating information in the Registers of Scotland in each of the last five years.

Registers of Scotland is a non-Ministerial Public Body answerable to the Scottish Parliament.

RoS charge a range of different fees for various types of application. The following table details the main application types. Further information on RoS fees and types of application is available on the RoS website, www.ros.gov.uk.

Financial Year	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22	2022-23	2023-24
	£	£	£	£	£
Land Register Disposition	311	333	376	389	391
Land Register Standard Security	60	66	80	80	80
Land Register (Other Deeds)	70	74	88	87	90
Sasine Register	62	68	81	82	83
Crofting Register	90	90	90	90	90
Chancery and Judicial Registers	16	22	27	30	28

Question reference: S6W-33055

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 21 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to increase the transparency of its advertising expenditure.

Question reference: S6W-33628

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 20 January 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 3 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what progress it has made in ensuring equitable access to palliative care services across NHS boards, and how it is addressing any gaps identified in rural areas such as Aberdeenshire.

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